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Wednesday, August 28, 2013

Okay, it's official, I'll be a guest of honor
at the Lucca Game Fair this fall to celebrate the 40 year anniversary of
the D&D Basic Set. Looking forward to meeting new and old friends, and having a great time.

When Ed Greenwood was asked about the actual "age" of the Forgotten Realms, he answered the following:"I started creating the Realms in 1966 (when, yes, I was six), as a setting for short stories featuring Mirt the Moneylender (moving along the Sword Coast from city to city, a step ahead of creditors, rivals, and local authorities). It became "the Realms" in 1967. Realms fiction was published (in various magazines in Canada, and a small-press book) from 1966 through 1979, when I started doing Realms-related articles in "The Dragon," as the magazine was then known."D&D first appeared in 1974, but I didn't discover it until 1975. I converted the Realms to match D&D magic and monster stats in 1978. So the published Realms does predate Greyhawk and Dragonlance and the Known World/Mystara (I've designed official material for all of those, Mystara the most -- and it's my dearest love of all the TSR D&D settings after the Realms)."As a D&D game setting, the published-by-TSR (and later also by Jake, in an issue of Gameplay magazine) Realms dates from 1979. Just to set everything straight for those who weren't born, or weren't into gaming, back then..."

Wednesday, August 14, 2013

Once ravaged during the fateful Crusade on Ancient Orzafeth, an easy mark thereafter for those dastardly Qeodim raiders, Wyllareth struggled to rebuild itself. After its rebirth as a duchy, its ruler played a new card to solve her predicament. . . or did she?

Duchy of Wyllareth -- Map Scale: 8 Miles per Hex

This oblong province runs nearly 400 miles east to west, and 168 miles north to south at its widest spot. Save for the Baalbeth Vale, Wyllareth is as hilly as a flounder stuck under Thor’s hammer. . . and about as joyful. It is a sinister land, overcast, cold, windy, devoid of much population, and marked with scars of war still visible to this day. Wrecked towns and strongholds altogether fail to qualify as ruins, but more as ruins of ruins, following the vicious de-Orzafething campaign to eradicate all things harking of Outer Beings. What Alphatian inquisitors did not raze had already been desecrated, crushed, and desecrated once more by the fiends of Orzafeth. What little was left was hastily buried or scattered.

Thursday, August 1, 2013

At the tip of the northwestern corner of Alphatia lies the land of a conquered people yearning to regain their freedom. But what can an isolated culture truly hope to gain in the face of the mighty Alphatian Empire?

County ofVästheim -- Map Scale: 8 Miles per Hex

Just short of 200 miles north to south and about as wide, Västheim occupies the peninsula along the Strait of Qeodhar. Cold, wet, and wind-beaten, its soggy grasslands and hills surround the northwestern edge of the Kerothar Mountains. Climate along Alphatia’s northern west coast is similar to the one prevailing in real world Anchorage, Alaska—temperatures average between 50° and 65° F. in the summer (from 10° to 18° C.), and 11° to 23° F. in the winter (from –11° to –5° C.) Though winters tend to be mostly cloudy and snowy, weather remains unpredictable; while one year may see several feet of snow accumulation on the ground, another could experience frequent thaws and ice buildup during the nights. Winds generally blow across the Sea of Alphatia. A mild sea current flows from the south before turning eastward around the northernmost cape, and becomes colder in the Strait of Qeodhar. Temperatures drop rapidly in the mountains. In the vicinity of Widzif, daylight hours in the summer exceed those in the winter due to the region’s latitude.

Original settlers were Antalians, fearless navigators and warriors who’d sailed eastward from faraway Brun. They’d named this land Østheim centuries ago, although it later became known as Västheim (pronounced VEST-high’m), the Kingdom of the West, reflecting an Alphatian point of view. It is only one of many changes imposed by the wizardly conquerors. The present county dates back to the establishment of Greater Frisland as a subject kingdom of the Alphatian Empire, centuries after the fall of the old Antalian kingdoms. Since then, the inhabitants have become somewhat more mixed in their cultural and racial heritage. Dark-haired and pale skinned Alphatians as well as copper skinned Cypric have mixed with local Antalians, showing Yanifey influences as well. In Västheim, the Ogam seem like a distant peril, an ugly and shameful disease that struck their southern cousins which, thankfully, has been averted here. In the minds of the locals, it instilled a concept that their land is therefore unsoiled, somehow holier, and more righteous than their neighbors’. Västheim’s relative economic strength, at least from a Frislandic point of view, only helps reinforce this strong parochial mentality.

I
grew up in France (mostly), England, Morocco, Washington DC, and Texas. I speak mostly French and English, with a little Spanish, Portuguese, and German. Returning to Nice for my education, I graduated from the lycée hotelier in 1977; I got passionately interested in wargames when I was attending the Lycée ... primarily in Avalon Hill games like Kriegspiel, Luftwaffe, Third Reich, and Panzer Leader
— the classics. There were, of course, no French editions of these
games at the time, so I had to learn the American versions. I loved to travel, so I studied hotel management and worked as a concierge in both France and California.

While living in San Francisco I discovered the Dungeons & Dragons Basic Set, and when I returned to Paris I joined my first regular Dungeons & Dragons (D&D) group. I started writing articles on D&D and AD&D for French gaming magazine Casus Belli, and there learned that TSR
was looking for someone to translate the games into French. Well, I
spoke and wrote both languages, and I knew the games, so a request reached Gary Gygax.
By a coincidence, he was just about to come to Paris on business, and
so we set up a meeting. I must have done OK, because he offered me the
job. After a few months of doing translation work in Nice, TSR requested I move to the home office in Lake Geneva, Wisconsin. For a sun-loving Mediterranean like me, Wisconsin in February was a bit of a shock.

After working for two years as a translator, I transferred to TSR's Games Division in July
1985 as an Acquisitions Coordinator, in charge of contracting
freelance writers. I also did game design, including adventure
modules CM7, Tree of Life; M1, Into the Maelstrom; and co-authorship of DL12, Dragons of Faith.

I worked on a number of products for the basic Dungeons & Dragons game, including writing the "Voyage of the Princess Ark" series for Dragon magazine, a monthly feature that lasted about three years, as well as other products for the Advanced Dungeons & Dragons game. I was the Basic D&D line Product Manager for years, during which the beloved D&D Gazetteers and the Rules Cyclopedia were published. I also worked at TSR as the director of production planning and head of games acquisitions.

My son Noel came to this world when TSR went bankrupt. One of the outcomes of the happy event in my life was that I could not follow my colleagues to Renton, Wa, at WotC, which had salvaged most of TSR's creative team. My writing years went on hiatus while I explored other avenues. After some time at US Web near Milwaukee and United Airlines at O'Hare, I'm now back in Wisconsin to re-invent myself and do what I really want to do! This now includes the creation of the World of Calidar.